ABSTRACT

“Correct Ending Punctuation” by Brandon Siewert is a study that looks at a kindergarten class’s growth in their ability to use complete sentences with correct ending punctuation. The study took place while the class wrapped up a unit from the Lucy Calkins curriculum about writing narrative stories and started a new informational writing unit, in which the students learned about writing to teach others. Before starting the unit, the class read through a couple of “How-To” books together. Then, the students wrote their own “How-To” books about how to do something they can do, and can teach others how to do. These stories were collected and used as the pre-assessment. The pre-assessment data collected for the study was based on whether the students used correct ending punctuation never, sometimes, or always in their written story. This information from the pre-assessment was used to guide the instruction for the first lessons in the series of this study. After four weeks and ten writing lessons, the students all turned in their favorite “How-To” story that they had completed writing. These stories were used as the post assessment, and the data was analyzed the same as the pre-assessment. The results showed the student’s progress, and also the areas in which they still need to work on.